


Final Dogma

by surprisepink



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Death, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Church Route, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Medical Experimentation, Minor Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra, Nightmares, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pyrrhic Ending, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Torture, Tragedy, ambiguously requited love, tea parties as a coping technique
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:49:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26198872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surprisepink/pseuds/surprisepink
Summary: Amidst war, Lysithea and Ferdnand have come to share tea each morning. They have, it turns out, more in common than one might expect—but above all, they share their grief.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir & Lysithea von Ordelia
Comments: 9
Kudos: 11
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	Final Dogma

**Author's Note:**

  * For [intyalote](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intyalote/gifts).



> My first exchange piece in about seven years! /)_(\

More than anything, she's ready to die.

Her small hands tremble as she clenches and unclenches them, trying to focus on the pinch of her fingernails digging into her palms, the bit of sky she can just barely see through her small window, the tattered blanket around her shoulders providing what little warmth it can. Anything other than her head pounding in time with each beat of her heart and the pain that's spreading through her body.

 _They_ had come some time ago, just two this time but still enough to pin her down and once again carry out some step of their experiments that she didn’t understand and no longer cared to. She was no longer able to put up any resistance, so it had been easy for one of the pair had held her down and the other had put something into her lower back, something long and thin that punctured the skin and got pushed deep inside of her. It feels as though it's either pumping something into her or pulling something out of her or maybe both. Pain radiates from there up her spine and beyond, spreading through her body, weakening her.

Several hours have passed since then, she thinks, but in truth it might have been days and it might have been ten minutes. She weakly reaches her hand around and, not for the first time, tugs at the item inside her. Of course it won't budge; it must be held in by some sort of magic she can't begin to understand. If only she’d studied more, maybe she’d have been able to figure out how to remove it. Young as she is, Lysithea is bright, and adults tend to underestimate her. She should have been able to outsmart them—it’s easy to think that, but the fact of the matter is that there’s no escape.

Dark hair hangs around her face, damp with sweat. If she had a mirror to look into, she'd no doubt be white as a sheet. It’s all she can do to slowly, painstakingly shift her position from lying down on her stomach to sitting up, leaning over the side of the bed. She'd read in a book once that if you feel like you're about to faint, you should sit with your head between your legs. The advice wasn't wrong, per se, but it's not helping much. It might even be better if she _could_ just pass out, leave the world behind until the torment is over and her body is her own again. But fainting won't help her feel better and it certainly won't deter her captors—this, she knows from experience.

She supposes she should be grateful that they've at least provided her with a bed and clean sheets, still smelling faintly of soap and lavender. The scent fills her nose and overtakes her, and she lets her mind wander, trying to fill it with as much nothing as she can as she weathers this trial that feels like it will have no end.

Lysithea wakes up from her dream to an almost irritatingly perfect day: sunshine and birdsong and a breeze that plays with her nightgown’s long sleeves. She's never been able to manage more than a few days without night terrors, despite trying everything—casting various charms, reading happy stories at night, and following a few old wives' tales she's too smart to really believe in. Even now a half-emptied glass of milk with cinnamon and turmeric, warmed last night but now tepid, sits on her bedside table. Tasty, but useless. She’ll have to toss it out later.

She’s safe now; this, she knows well. Garreg Mach’s walls are wide and tall, and the monastery is protected by some of the best soldiers in the world. Still, some part of her fears being taken again.

And still, five years ago it had been all too easy for Edelgard to plan her coup in secret and carry it out before anyone could realize what was going on. Edelgard had been Lyisthea’s _friend_ , or so Lysithea had thought. They’d had so much in common—and then it turned out they hadn’t had much in common at all. Lysithea had cared for her then, but she couldn’t allow a war to happen. Her own short life mattered little, when it came down to it, but war would endanger her friends, her nation, her _family_. Even for the greater good, it could not be justified.

But some small voice in her mind reminds her that Edelgard _understands_ her like nobody else does. If only— well, no time to fret about that. There isn’t much time to get dressed before she’s late for her breakfast arrangement. The dining hall feels too cramped now, even though far fewer people eat there than did five years ago. Her nightmares are a little bit easier to forget about with a friend.

Ferdinand offers a weak smile as she takes a seat next to him, and doesn’t seem phased by the way her greeting barely reaches a mumble. Ever the gentleman, he pours her tea with practiced motions: honeyed fruit blend, her preference but not his. She feels babied when he does this, but doesn’t object to it. Ferdinand, she has learned, needs someone to take care to help save him from his tendency to get trapped in a downward emotional spiral of his own making.

Lysithea adds sugar cubes to her cup—one, two, three, four—and doesn't bother to stir them in. They'll melt quickly enough, she knows, and she'll sip the tea slowly, and by the end it will be closer to a sludge than a drink. Once upon a time Ferdinand would have chastised her for it, would have extolled the virtues of the drink in its purest form and insisted that her choice of tea has quite enough sweetness already. But tea time between them is unnervingly quiet now. 

Everything changes when you're at war; Lysithea, at war with her own body, has known that for years. Ferdinand only learned it more recently, when Edelgard betrayed him, forcing him to question everything he thought that he knew. He and Lysithea are the same in that way, left behind by a woman they thought was an ally and a friend—it’s hard not to find a sense of kinship in that, so they’ve chosen to embrace it and have begun a sort of friendship of their own.

Ferdinand sits here, across from her, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. He gazes over her shoulder, although nothing of note lies beyond it.

"What are you looking for?" Lysithea asks. She takes a sip of her tea, grimaces. Adds another sugar cube. She won't be around long enough for it to rot her teeth.

"Nothing," Ferdinand replies when he realizes she's speaking to him. "I was thinking of other things, and I apologize for that.”

"Don't. Neither of us has time for apologies." Another sip. Better. "I used to have tea with Edelgard sometimes, too, though we weren't as close as you."

"It is a stretch to call us close, given that I hadn't the faintest idea she was planning a coup."

"Still."

He shakes his head and tries to offer her a smile. He shouldn't have bothered; it only makes him seem sadder. "In the end, I did not know anything about her. About either of them."

It's plain as day who _they_ are. Lysithea and Ferdinand talk about things other than the war, but despite their efforts the conversation always seems to reach this point, some days faster than others: Edelgard and Hubert, now and forever their greatest enemies.

Thanks to her newfound friendship with Ferdinand, Lysithea has paid more attention to Hubert in the past few months since she returned to Garreg Mach than she ever had in times of peace. When they were students, he didn't stand out much to her: he was Edelgard's shadow who Lysithea occasionally partnered with during free study periods due to a shared interest in dark magic, and that was about it. To Ferdinand, he was evidently far more. A rat, Ferdinand called him, without a shred of dignity. The emperor's mindless pet. And yet—a man of great ability and even greater drive to use it to carry out his emperor's will.

"If only he had chosen to defy her," says Ferdinand. "But that is something that could never be. Should circumstances only have been the smallest bit different, I myself may not have been sitting here before you, Lysithea. If had all allied in the end, then perhaps we would be—"

Lysithea raises an eyebrow. She usually stays silent while he rambles. They all need somebody to talk to.

"I should not think of it," Ferdinand concludes.

"You'll think about it anyway,” Lysithea says. “What could have been. So you may as well talk about it.”

She had wanted to focus her studies on faith once, when she was small and naive. Her father has told her that she used to sit on his knee and have him read her picture books, illustrated versions of the church's stories, packaged neatly for children without the blood and guts and pain of war. She barely remembers it herself—but then, her memory for what happened before the experiments is shaky at best. They stole away the whole of her childhood.

Regardless, faith requires belief in something, and once _they_ released Lysithea, satisfied that their experiments had been successful, she didn't believe in much of anything, least of all in a benevolent goddess who would answer her prayers.

There were books in the place where they kept her too, so she spent those days in a cold, lonely room with the sight of familiar volumes as her only reminder of home. They'd taken them from her shelves when they took _her_ , had placed them beside the bed. When she was awake, she could have reached them. Could have read them, even, whenever an experiment required her to simply lie still and be alone with her thoughts—which was most of them.

But just because _they_ didn’t usually bind her hands or restrict her movement within the room didn’t mean she had the fortitude to read. She lacked even the strength to laugh bitterly at the irony of it all. In the past, she'd wished she didn't have to spend time with lessons—magic, riding, finishing—and instead had endless time to simply read whatever she chose. During the experiments she had all of the time in the world, and all she wanted was to end it.

Years later she makes no effort to make her cloud memories any clearer. But some images stand out, here and there: the dog she heard barking outside one day, followed by the crack of magic and a whimper. The feeling of ice in her blood as magic was forced through her body, chilling her to the bone. As she tried to ignore it, her sight locked on the volume on top of the pile: _The Farghean Princess of the Snowy Hills_.

One of many childish books she’d have to leave behind.

Linhardt tells her that faith magic has very little to do with the goddess and very much to do with finding something that you can trust and believe in. He himself barely believes in the goddess, he explains as if their professor isn't Sothis made flesh. Surely Lysithea can find some source of faith, just as Linhardt has faith in his own skills and abilities.

She ignores him and doubles down on her reason studies. Most days even faith in herself is beyond her. Her magic now is based on pure, cold logic: memorizing spells, precise movements. Why rely on her feelings—such fickle things—when she can simply learn to cast spells with practiced efficiency?

From a distance, her magic looks like it's black and purple but up close it becomes clear that it is _nothing_ : an emptiness, a void. 

"And there's nothing more powerful than that," she concludes, stretching to reach for a volume that's just slightly too high for her to reach. She's already read it—in the interest of promoting faith and anima spells, Seteth has allowed the monastery to only keep so many books about the darker version of reason magic. A stupid decision, and she’d like to tell him as much; her magic is just _dark_ , not _evil_. It doesn’t help, she supposes, that nobody besides her in the monastery studies it.

Linhardt pulls out the book easily and hands it to her. "I can heal any damage you do just as quickly as you can cause it, short of when you've killed someone."

"You make it sound as if I'm killing people left and right."

"Aren't you? Dark magic is quite efficient in killing, since it has no other purpose. Frankly, it's better than most of the alternatives. Less gore to stomach."

The book has been kept safely in the library—it's a volume of theory, not a spellbook, so there's no reason for it to cross a battlefield. Still, it's worn around the edges, and scrapes and imperfections decorate the simple leather cover. Some things are allowed to age gracefully.

"You're always talking like a scholar," Lysithea says.

"I am a scholar," Linhardt replies. "The war is just an interruption. Hopefully you can help us end it sooner."

"Working on it. The professor wants me to learn to ride a pegasus next."

"Oh? I recall Hubert had a fondness for them as well. You're our substitute for him in more ways then one."

Anger flashes in Lysithea's eyes. How dare he? All the work she's put in, all the life she's had no other choice but to spend fighting _against_ the Emperor and her vassal, only to get compared to them? It’s not meant to be anything personal—she knows Linhardt has little filter for his words and merely expresses whatever he happens to observe—but that doesn’t mean she’d like to hear it.

She's tempted to act out, to punish him with harsh words or a childish shove. Instead, she turns on her heel to leave. "I'm done talking to you. Thanks for getting me the book," she says. He does not follow.

The first thing she did after she was released was pray. She asked for healing, for vengeance, for the knowledge and power she needed to make sure nothing like this ever happened again.

No goddess came, just her mother, sobbing, and father, trembling but doing his best to hold himself together. They knew what happened to her, but they could never _know_ , not really. She spared them the details; there was no point to sharing them.

She hasn't prayed since then.

With each passing day, the day they both dread draws closer: the inevitable confrontation against Edelgard and those who have chosen to follow her. Ferdinand, however, has grown gloomier by the week: speaking with less conviction, stepping back more often than not to let others take over the conversation. Lysithea still wonders sometimes how things might have been if he had followed Edelgard. They'd be a full set then: Emperor, Minister of the Household, and Prime Minister. Powerful, Lysithea thinks. Maybe unstoppable.

She doesn’t tell Ferdinand that she’s glad he didn’t, that she’s it’s fully possible that his absence is the crack in Edelgard’s armor that will lead to her demise. His intellect and insight are invaluable to the church's cause—and beyond that, his company is precious to her. They still take tea together every morning like clockwork, and increasingly do their best to avoid talking about anything but the most mundane of topics. The weather, what novels they've been reading, what the dining hall is serving for lunch today. Anything at all for a distraction.

And still, the topic is impossible to avoid, when the others are talking about the war just as much as they always have.

"Ferdinand," Lysithea says one morning as he takes a large bite of his scone, followed by a generous sip of tea. "Do I remind you of Hubert?"

His eyes grow wide, and he makes a face like he’s about to spit out his tea, but Ferdinand recovers quickly. He makes a point to swallow first, then clears his throat and wipes the shocked expression from his face. "What makes you ask me that?"

"No reason," she says. It hasn't been _bothering_ her, not really, but—well, who wouldn't wonder about such an odd accusation?

"I do not spend these precious hours with you simply because you remind me of our enemy, no."

"'Simply'? So I do remind you of him, a little?"

"That is not what I mean."

"Interesting."

"We shall be marching on Enbarr in the next months, and no doubt will encounter him. The time for sentimentality has long passed."

"...sorry."

She's not much for apologies, not when she's not even done anything _wrong_ , but Ferdinand's eyes are too sad. Something that she's said has clearly offended.

"That is not—" Ferdinand frowns. "We ought to talk about something else."

The day, anticipated and dreaded, will come either way. Best to make what remains as painless as possible. No point in dwelling in unhappy thoughts during waking hours; Lysithea does plenty of that at night.

The battle at Enbarr looms over them and now Lysithea can't sleep through a single night. Each night the dreams come, a routine she can’t stop no matter how she tries. Yet if she denies herself sleep, stresses still plague her conscious mind. She’s not a child, hasn’t been a child for years now, but her body, both growing and dying, can’t function without sleep the way some of the others’ can. And so she lies down each night and allows the terrors to envelope her.

The worst dream of all happens the night before—not because it dredges up the worst memory, but because the present hurts more than the past.

Though a nightmare is what was expected, the vividness of it is not. Most of her dreams are made up of vague shapes, blurs of undefined colors. They’re made up of feelings more than anything: distress, grief, fear. Tonight, though, everything is so clear. She wishes that wasn’t the case.

Within the dream she finds herself in the cathedral,the afternoon light streaming through stained glass. There's a bitter taste in her mouth, like a medicine she doesn't recognize and doesn’t want to. A sense of dread fills her as she takes it all in, sunlight on rubble on defiled sacred ground. Ths all must be a dream, but why is it taking place _here_? There's no reason for it; even when she was young and devout she still had little patience for services, and so churches hold little significance to her, positive or negative. Usually her dreams happen in places of significance, or else they take place in no particular location at all.

She turns around, intending to leave. Each step is like walking through quicksand, but at least she can make progress. Until she can't; her steps somehow take her to the same place that she began: a pile of rubble, immoble as she herself is.

Lysithea looks down and her hands are dark—no, not dark. Her hands are gone, and yet they are not gone. It's like her arms just... end. A spell gone wrong, one might think, but she hasn't cast any spells and anyway, nothing like this was in any of the books she's read. She attempts to move them closer to her face, so that she might at least examine them, but that, too, is impossible.

Her stomach lurches. The bitterness in her mouth grows stronger. If only she had a cake, a candy, some tea—anything to cover it up. She is, she realizes, being taken over by the darkness, and everything she trusts in is leaving her: the hands she uses to fight, her ability to run away, the mouth she uses to enjoy sweets as a small reprieve from all that pains her. Her body is not, as they say, a temple; it is a curse that she is suffering.

There's someone else at the destroyed altar—and then Lysithea blinks and suddenly it's not destroyed. It's whole again and two figures are there, one clad in red and the other black. Their backs are both turned, but their identities are unmistakable. A lump grows in her throat; it’s a dream, a dream, she reminds herself, but it feels so real. If only she could talk to them. If only they might come to an agreement here that would impact the way things were in the real world.

Edelegard’s name is on her lips but whe Lysithea opens them to speak, no sound comes out. It's like some kind of joke that even her voice, one of the few things she hasn’t lost, is still betraying her.

Edelgard is looking at her, looking past her, not looking at her at all and then all Lysithea feels is pain.

She wakes in a cold sweat. Once again, she sees the lukewarm milk beside her bed, the glass almost empty this time. Useless.

In reality, her hands are still here, pale and unmarred. Not even a scar on them. The church's soldiers are good at protecting her, and magic itself does not scar the wielder the way that a blade does.

After several deep breaths, she shakily steps out of bed. It's morning, she thinks, though the overcast sky makes it hard to tell. Her tea with Ferdinand is cancelled for today, since there's so much preparation to do. It is, optimistically, on for tomorrow.

The experiments are only her second most painful memory, she realizes. The most painful now is she and Edelgard, perhaps the only person who might have understood her, leaving each other behind.

The battle at Enbarr is fierce, frantic, and most of all it is bloody. Lysethia doesn't wince at the sight of blood, like Linhardt. She does not look upon fallen enemies with sorrow, like Dorothea. She does not whisper prayers to the fallen, asking for their salvation in the next world, like Flayn. To the others, she may seem emotionless, cutting down foes from great distances with ease.

The truth is that she feels everything so strongly that she feels nothing at all. Soldier after soldier dies and Lysithea, practiced in the skill after months upon months of combat, forces herself not to think about how they had lives, families, dreams. Regardless of how the tides of combat turn, she herself has only a few years left. What right does she have to bestow that fate on others?

And a large, loud part of her even thinks that the war won't end, even after this battle ends and the Emperor falls. It seems too easy to kill a single person, even Edelgard herself, and end years of struggle just like that. Things are more complicated than that, and someone could easily step in to take her place. Still, death is no longer an option; Lysithea's only choice is to keep fighting.

A shout comes from below, one that sounds like it was about to be "watch out" but halfway through turns into a _scream_. She easily guides her pegasus closer to the ground. The voice was all too familiar, though she usually hears it during happier moments. On the ground is what—and who—she feared: a man fallen from his horse, vibrant hair marred with the sickening red of blood.

When she sees Ferdinand like that, crumpled into a heap, the first thing she does is frantically try to remember her faith magic. The army has its share of healers, but none are close enough for comfort. But if she only tries, if she can only _focus_ —

Her second thought, before she can even finish the first, is to recognize the source of the attack: black hair, black robes, and magic that's even darker than black, a darkness that can't be explained. A familiar darkness.

"Hubert!" Lysithea yells, gathering her own magic in her hands the very moment she realizes. Likely he's already preparing a second attack, hoping to finish Ferdinand off. There was no guarantee that he would be here, but neither is she surprised: fighting Hubert one day was inevitable.

Hubert takes a step closer, than another. Magic jumps and sizzles in his hands, but he doesn't attack. (Not yet, Lysithea thinks.) He could kill Ferdinand easily—but he doesn't. Odd, and Concerning.

Surprisingly, he speaks, and more surprisingly still it’s to her. "A shame it has to end like this, Lysithea,” he calls to Lysithea, still above him on her pegasus. “Lady Edelgard felt that you had _such_ potential. And so much in common with her!"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Lysithea snaps at him, as though she doesn’t already know. They'd never spoken of it, had never had a chance to. But Edelgard has always possessed the fortitude of someone who had already accepted her death, and that combined with the tone of her hair... well, there was a conclusion that was easy to draw.

Hubert shakes his head. "It's not worth my time now," he says, and he sends spikes of darkness toward them—toward _her_ , Lysethea realizes. And then the world is cold and dark and fire shoots through her veins but she does not falter, weathers the attack. Years of the dark arts have made her resilient to magic, and unafraid of it to boot.

She holds onto her own growing spell through the assault; it chills her to the bone and burns her up all at once, the kind of spell that would bring most people not only close to death but moreover _ready_ to die. That's the highest form of magic there is: something so strong it can change your emotions. Healers bring joy; mages, destruction.

Lysithea can wreak her own destruction, and she does. When the spell ends she charges Hubert easily. Her pegasus has a natural resistance to magic, and Lysithea... Lysithea has felt far, far more ready to die in the past than she is in this moment. Right now, all that matters is saving Ferdinand—or avenging him. She's still not sure which.

It is not magic that strikes the next blow, but the sword in Lysithea's hand, simple iron forged to be strengthened. Hubert stumbles back as it goes through his chest, clearly not expecting a physical attack delivered so efficiently by a mage.

"I've chosen my path," she whispers as Hubert falls.

Lysithea has always been an overachiever.

Ferdinand and Lysithea survive to have tea another day. Today, there is peace; as for tomorrow, that is still a mystery.

"Do you think things would have been better if we had joined them?” Lysithea asks, looking down at her hands for what feels like the hundredth time. It would have changed something, that much is certain. Whether that would make things better, she’ll never know.

Ferdinand is silent, and the question lingers heavy in the air.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [fanfic twitter](https://twitter.com/surprisepink_) now if you're into that!


End file.
